On Apr 26, 5:00=A0pm, "Capn'O" <dan.zin...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Any way you slice it I hope that Walsh doesn't have his mind made up
> about Jackson. I'd hope he'd let the playoffs play out and get a full
> range on who is available while conducting interviews of coaches not
> under contract in the interim. Avery's definitely worth a flyer... but
> he also inherited a well coached team from Nelson and implemented the
> novel idea of defense to it. Would he do as well from scratch?
I think the key question, when you look at coaching potentially the
same roster (Marbury, Crawford, Richardson, Jeffries, Randolph, Curry,
James et al) is this: who is going to be able to work with all of
these personalities? Not who is the best "basketball mind" per se,
because that might only apply to guys who are ready to go as opposed
to guys who have been living in a completely dysfunctional basketball
existence for years (see: Brown, Larry) -- but who is the best person
to get this group of overpaid, undereducated, uninterested,
defensively liable players to actually give a **** and go out and play
hard for 48 minutes at both ends, and patiently tolerate all their BS
while they possibly attempt to change?
OTOH, if (as I hope) Walsh is as serious about rebuilding as he
sounds, and is just going to have a Sacramento Kings-style slow fire
sale on everything for shorter contracts, then it's not going to
matter much. In that case, we just need someone who's going to be
able to take all the jeers about losing from the NY media on the chin
and try to grow and shape a franchise back together in terms of core
mentality WHILE the team loses. In terms of coaching a young team in
rebuilding transition, Avery is just as inexperienced as Jackson (as
you note, Avery inherited a playoff-tested, already-built team, and he
hasn't been able to do much with that when it matters).
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